How Jesse Collins Became the Go-To Producer Behind TV’s Biggest Spectacles, From Emmys to Grammys to Super Bowl Halftime Show
It’s been less than 24 hours since production wrapped on the 76th Emmy Awards, but Jesse Collins and his fellow executive producers are already on the go — specifically, to New Orleans. The team is flying to the Big Easy on Tuesday to scout the Superdome as they plan next February’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show, starring Kendrick Lamar.
“It’s our first time with the artist team,” notes Jesse Collins Entertainment prexy Dionne Harmon. “We’ve actually been a few times already in preparation, but since the announcement, it’s the first time Kendrick’s team and us will all come together.”
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Adds Jeannae Rouzan-Clay, Jesse Collins Entertainment’s senior VP of specials, “There’s always something going on!” And she’s not wrong: Also on Monday, BET just announced that its annual BET Hip Hop Awards — which Collins, Harmon and Rouzan-Clay also exec produce — is making a big move next month to Las Vegas.
Between now and the Super Bowl on Feb. 9, Collins and company additionally have a trio of holiday specials in the works (including two for NBC and one for CBS) in December, plus the return of Netflix’s “Rhythm + Flow” in November, next month’s premiere of We TV’s new reality show “Tia Mowry: My Next Act,” the October airdates for the BET Hip Hop Awards and the January launch of CBS’ revival of “Hollywood Squares,” which they’re doing in conjunction with Drew Barrymore. Beyond that, on the horizon for Collins is another Grammy Awards ceremony, another BET Awards, and so on.
Collins credits the strength of Harmon, Rouzan-Clay and the rest of his team for keeping it all going. There’s no time to rest, but that’s what has now made Jesse Collins Entertainment one of the premier go-to houses for big TV spectacles.
“I love to work,” he says. “I love to do all this stuff. I think about it constantly, and it’s all fun. I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t doing this. It’s stressful, and it’s air quote, ‘hard,’ but let’s not pretend that it’s like people out there really working to make a living. We’re producing the Emmys! Where I’m from, in Virginia, people have real jobs, and a lot of times, they’re not fun. And so, I really appreciate all of this.”
Collins keeps in touch with those D.C.-area pals via group text, and he says his family and friends have been supportive from the very beginning — when he started out while still in high school as an intern at top 40 radio station WAVA. From there, he landed a summer job at New York’s WQHT Hot 97, and then his first full-time gig at WKHI in Ocean City, Md.
But Collins really got on the fast track when he joined Washington’s legendary urban CHR WPGC (longtime home to morning DJ and legendary BET “Video Soul” host Donnie Simpson) doing the evening shift. “That meant I could go to the club and then back to work,” Collins remembers.
Then came the call that changed everything: The program director behind Los Angeles’ 92.3 The Beat (KKBT-FM) recruited Collins out west to join the hip hop station’s team, and he helped host “Ruthless Radio” with Eazy-E, Julio G and others. “That was an incredible time,” Collins remembers. “1994, ’95, ’96. When Snoop and Dr. Dre really broke out. Just a wild time in hip hop.”
It was Collins’ time on The Beat that caught the attention of filmmaker Robert Townsend, who had just launched The WB Network sitcom “The Parent ‘Hood.” Townsend recruited Collins to serve as a writer on the show.
“Once I got out here, I started meeting people in the TV and film business, and I knew I wanted to get over into this side some way,” he says. “I met people that were really like mentors, people like Marlon Wayans, Arsenio Hall, Faizon Love and Chris Tucker. Robert Townsend really took a chance and helped me become a sitcom writer. Once I was able to get into that space, I never looked back.”
Working on “The Parent ‘Hood” was like TV boot camp for Collins. “Townsend was great about letting me experience everything,” he says. “We weren’t just locked in the writers room. We were on set, we were involved with casting, we got to meet with the directors. I’ll forever be grateful to Robert, because he let me see the whole process. I didn’t even realize how much I was learning, but there are so many things I picked up from that show that helped me, even today.”
Collins also wrote for host Montell Jordan on Townsend’s variety series “Motown Live,” and that led to a meeting with live TV producer John Cossette — who was producing the first-ever BET Awards in 2001.
Collins came in with gusto: “I just said, ‘You should make me a producer on the show.’ He laughed and asked, ‘why?’ And I said, you’re gonna need Snoop. And I know Snoop.’ He said OK, and Snoop wound up doing the show — and we wound up doing a big thing with him, Dre and Eminem. That’s what really got me into producing.”
Coincidentally, Collins’ suggestion that “Video Soul” host Simpson play a role on that first BET special was the kind of idea that convinced Cossette that the young upstart would be a natural producer. Cossette, the son of famed Grammys producer Pierre Cossette (who later succeeded his father at the Grammys helm), wound up becoming another mentor. And that’s where Collins got the live bug.
“There’s an energy to live. I mean, I love scripted, unscripted, all the things we do,” he says. “But there’s an adrenaline with it. You’re really making the impossible possible. You sit down with an artist, and they have this vision. Something that I learned from John Cossette was to really focus on trying to create those moments, build that trust with the artist, and do whatever you can do because to make the vision happen.”
Collins eventually became an exec producer and executive VP of Cossette Productions. After Cossette’s death in 2011, Collins launched the Jesse Collins Entertainment shingle the following year. His roster continued to grow from there, adding the American Music Awards, the Oscars and the Golden Globes to the Grammys and multiple BET ceremonies. He received an Emmy nomination for “The Light We Carry: Michelle Obama & Oprah Winfrey,” and other specials have included “CNN’s Juneteenth: A Global Celebration of Freedom,” “Martin: The Reunion,” “John Lewis: Celebrating A Hero,” “Love & Happiness: An Obama Celebration,” “Leslie Jones: Time Machine” and “Rip the Runway.”
Collins won an Emmy in 2022 for the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show. More on that in a moment. It’s safe to say Collins has had plenty of “pinch me” moments as a producer for some of the biggest spectacles on. But he still remembers the opening to the 2016 BET Awards as a particularly magic moment.
That year’s show kicked off with Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar performing an epic version “Freedom,” with a formation of dancers on a stage filled with water. As Collins remembers, there was something magical about how it all came together. “I knew that this was going to be a performance that will live forever,” he says. “The way it started with the dancers coming down the aisles, which was something that Beyoncé figured out in rehearsal, and then when Kendrick came to the floor and he did the verse, and she was dancing with him, and they were kicking water on each other.. the chemistry between the two was just a connection that you don’t get to see often between artists.”
Lamar, of course, will once again be center stage in February with Collins at the helm — this time, as the featured act during the Super Bowl LIX halftime show. He knows that Lil Wayne fans (well, and Lil Wayne himself) are disappointed that the New Orleans native didn’t get the gig, but Collins is confident that Lamar is the right choice.
“We love Wayne,” Collins says. “There’s always Vegas odds on who’s going to get to perform it. But I think we’re going to do an amazing show with Kendrick, and I think everybody’s going to love the halftime show. I know Kendrick is going to work exceptionally hard to deliver an amazing show.”
Lamar has already been a good luck charm for Collins, who won that Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Emmy in the outstanding variety special (live) category, which included the Compton native’s contribution. (The event served as a tribute to hip-hop that included Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem and 50 Cent, as well as Lamar.) Collins has been an EP on the Super Bowl halftime show since 2021, joining Jay-Z and his Roc Nation team in molding one of the most anticipated highlights inside TV’s most-watched event of the year.
“It’s a decision that Jay makes,” Collins says of choosing the annual halftime act. “Since we’ve been on board with that show, he’s made it every year, and it’s been amazing. He’s always picked right!”
Meanwhile, even as Collins and his team prep for those holiday specials, “Hollywood Squares” and the Super Bowl, they’re also looking at other opportunities to expand. Besides awards shows and specials, Jesse Collins Entertainment has dabbled in talk (“Yara Shahidi’s Day Off,” “Face to Face With Becky G”), children’s shows (Daytime Emmy winner “Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices”) and plenty of unscripted (“Gabrielle Union: My Journey to 50,” “My Killer Body With K. Michelle,” “DJ Cassidy’s Pass the Mic” and more). But it’s scripted where the company is eying a big move.
Past scripted fare from the company include the satirical “Real Husbands of Hollywood” and the music-themed miniseries “The New Edition Story” and “The Bobby Brown Story.” Now, the company has more scripted series in the works and some feature films in development as well.
“We want to make a feature film, and we’ve got some great ideas coming,” Collins says. “Look, we want to be in all of it. We want to be one of those companies, dare I say, like Imagine Entertainment. You look at them and you say, ‘Oh, they can do everything.’ So, we try not to limit ourselves to any one genre. You have to be fluid. If we were only in one area, like live award shows, we would not be where we are as a company today.”
Jesse Collins Entertainment’s team is currently around 28 employees — not including the staff that comes on to work on its various projects. Collins has experienced the usual bit of growing pains, most recently having to make a tough call on “Hollywood Squares,” when its showrunner was let go after reportedly making a “bigoted comment” to crew members. “There are those tough situations, and you have to make some tough decisions,” he says. “Sometimes people do things, and it’s not always about intent, it’s about the action or the result of the action. And we’re all learning every day about what a workplace environment needs to be, and what’s acceptable, and you have to figure out how to create an environment of comfort for people.”
That said, Collins is bullish on “Squares” and working with Barrymore’s Flower Films company. Jesse Collins Entertainment is already familiar with the format, having previously produced “Celebrity Squares,” “Hip Hop Squares” and “Nashville Squares.”
And of course, even as he gets deeper into episodic television, Collins says he won’t ever turn his back on live. Despite the usual amount of viewership erosion for awards shows and specials, Collins believes live is experiencing a bit of a renaissance. Streamers like Netflix are stocking up on more of these kinds of events. Social media continues to help amplify the power of watching something big happening in real time.
“Live is definitely hitting a boom,” Collins says. “People will watch celebrities and non-celebrities go live on social media and talk about things because they want to see something unexpected happen, and they want to be connected. How we deliver to them as content creators, producers, that is changing and evolving. We have to accept that and try to use our, air quote, expertise to deliver the best possible content that we can. Because people do still want to be entertained.”
Stylist: Jason Rembert
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